Lucy Elmina Anthony

Lucy Elmina Anthony (October 24, 1859July 4, 1944) was an internationally known leader in the American woman's suffrage movement. She was the niece of American social reformer and women's rights activist, Susan B. Anthony, and longtime companion of women's suffrage leader, Anna Howard Shaw. She served as a secretary to both women, as well as on the committee on local arrangements for the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) Early life Lucy Elmina Anthony was born on October 24, 1859, in Fort Scott, Kansas. She was the oldest child of Jacob Merritt Anthony (1834–1900), a sewing machine salesman, and Mary Almina Luther (1839–1915). Her paternal aunt was Susan B. Anthony, a prominent suffragist. Anthony's father served in the American Civil War, but little else is known about her early life. She moved from Kansas to Rochester, New York, in 1880 to attend the Rochester Free Academy, which she graduated from in 1883. While in New York, she lived with her aunts, Susan B. Anthony and Mary S. Anthony, and began assisting behind-the-scenes with the women's suffrage movement. She began a long career as a secretary for her aunt. She also acted as an assistant to Rachel Foster Avery, who Susan B. Anthony was training to become the leader of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Activism In 1886, Anthony worked with her aunt Susan to try to convince Anna Howard Shaw to leave her current organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), and the two women became close. Conversations about a merger between the NWSA and the AWSA began the same year, and the organizations officially united into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890. While this unification was being enacted, Anthony, Shaw, and Alice Stone Blackwell compiled The Yellow Ribbon Speaker: Readings and Recitations (1891), a collection of writings on women's suffrage.